GreenTech

Last year, Americans bought more heat pumps than gas furnaces, a striking split that’s likely to widen in the coming years as consumer awareness and climate regulations foster their uptake. Heat pumps are already widely used to cool homes across the Southeast, and they’re making inroads in the Northeast and Midwest, where consumers are warming

Historically, the Black community in the U.S. has been disproportionately affected by the effects of climate change. Relegated for decades to a vulnerable economic and social class, the community is nearly always at risk of facing the brunt of natural disasters, no matter where they occur. This issue has inspired many Black founders and investors

The real estate industry is a bit of a greenhouse gas powerhouse, responsible for 40% of all global emissions. A quarter of that comes from building materials, and Tangible has had enough. The company is building a tool for finding, managing and reporting on lower-carbon, more sustainable, building materials, and just closed a $3 million seed

The venture community has realized several things in recent years: Climate change isn’t going away, and there is a huge opportunity to invest in companies that promise to define entire segments of the future economy. With a few hiccups along the way, venture dollars have begun to flow with increasing volume and regularity to climate

Sweden-based VC fund Pale Blue Dot bounced onto the scene in 2020 with a €53 million fund to help climate-focused startups. This fund grew again by €34 million in April 2021, and after deploying investments into 28 climate-forward companies, the investor this week announced it has officially closed its second fund. This one is valued

Dutch e-bike maker VanMoof is refreshing its entry level lineup with a pair of new bikes available in some very springy colors. The X4 and S4, out this month, retain the frame and philosophy of VanMoof’s previous X3 and S3 e-bikes while trimming some of the complexities that made those models notably high-tech but less

Wingcopter, a startup out of Germany that has made a name for itself in the world of delivery drones used primarily for delivery of medicine and other goods to remote areas, has picked up some more financing to expand its business. The European Investment Bank is putting €40 million (close to $44 million) into the

Helion, the clean energy company with its eye firmly on the fusion prize, announced a couple of years ago that it had secured $2.2 billion of funding to help it develop cleaner, safer energy at a commercial scale in November 2021. Today, it is starting to reap the fruits of its labor, announcing an agreement

Last year, climate tech seemed to be invincible while the venture capital and startup worlds were fretting about a downturn and scrambling to conserve cash. Climate tech investors and founders in 2022 may not have hit the heights of 2021 but they didn’t drop off a cliff either. In the first quarter of the year,

Dutch startup Farmless has today announced that it has raised a €1.2 million pre-seed equity round at an undisclosed valuation to bring to our tables proteins created without the need for traditional farming operations. The climate crisis means that it has never been more pressing to develop alternative food sources in order to both protect

Electric boats are still a rarity on America’s waterways, but everyone seems to agree they represent a cleaner, quieter future for our lakes, rivers, and coastal waters. Navier has moved impressively quickly from idea to prototype to production boat, and the startup is now touring the west coast, winning admirers in high places who hope

Tesla officially broke ground Monday on a Texas lithium refinery, making it the only U.S. automaker to refine its own lithium. CEO Elon Musk said the refinery will produce enough battery grade lithium for 1 million electric vehicles by 2025, which would make Tesla the largest processor of lithium in North America. Tesla will continue

Casey Handmer is not intimidated by very large quantities. Trillions of acres. Thousands of gigawatts of solar power. A billion metric tons of carbon. His startup, Terraform Industries, aims to operate at these ambitious scales. The company wants to turn hydrogen and atmospheric carbon into synthetic natural gas at scale. It’s more than a little

Frontline is the latest startup grabbing VC dollars with a $6.4 million seed round Rebecca Szkutak 7 hours Wildfires, and the damage they cause, are a growing problem. The U.S. saw more than 66,000 wildfires in 2022 alone, and while many think of these natural disasters as largely a California problem, they burn all across

No doubt that Rick Fox has had plenty of emotional moments in his life. There was the birth of his children, of course, and as a member of the Los Angeles Lakers in the early 2000s, he won three NBA championships. But last week, it’s clear that his third act — that of a startup

When the SEC announced that it planned to require companies under its purview to disclose their climate-related risks and emissions, plenty of companies started publicly clutching their pearls. Tracking down the extent of their pollution would simply be either too expensive, too difficult or both, they said. No surprise there: Companies strike a similar tone

“Batteries are hard,” an expert once said. He wasn’t kidding. Designing and manufacturing pouches, slabs or cylinders filled with volatile chemicals that are capable of recharging ever more quickly is far from easy. Just ask LG, which had to pay GM nearly $2 billion for a costly manufacturing defect that saw every Chevy Bolt recalled.

States have taxed motorists at the pump for more than a century. Yet, as electric cars gain ground, what happens when folks stop refueling altogether? State lawmakers are increasingly imposing annual fees on EV owners, arguing they should pay up because they still rely on public infrastructure to get around. Texas is on track to

The future is very much yet to be written about vertical farming. In many ways, the technology presents hope in the midst of rising food safety concerns, aging populations and potential environmental collapse. It’s also an intensely hard row to hoe, as it were. Early companies in the space are going to be the ones

Every day, strong gusts off the North Atlantic buffet hundreds of wind farms in Ireland, generating so much energy that owners often have no one to sell it to, forcing them to dump otherwise useful power. “12 to 14% of our potential generation goes into surplus. In Northern Ireland, it’s at 18%,” said Derek Roddy,

Everything you buy and every service you pay for pollutes. In the case of a coffee, it might be a little. In the case of a Chevy Suburban or a flight to Durban, it might be a lot. Exactly how much, though, isn’t easy to determine. That’s in part because hardly any companies comprehensively track

About two-dozen venture capital firms say they are teaming up to “build a robust movement” in the VC business to combat the climate crisis. The group calls itself the Venture Climate Alliance, or VCA. The coalition counts well-known tech investors, including Kleiner Perkins, Tiger Global and Union Square Ventures as members, and said in a

Data is becoming as precious as water in precision agriculture, and Hydrosat aims to help provide both with a new set of Earth observation satellites. The company has raised a $20M A round, including $5 million in non-dilutive funding, which should put the first two thermal infrared satellites into orbit. The company’s mission is to

Picture this: Fast-growing startup raises a high eight-figure round. Then, a year later, it decides to raise another. Investors line up, and this time they pledge more money while giving the company a healthy valuation bump. What’s wrong with this picture? It’s 2023, a year in which plenty of investors have rolled up the welcome

A newish leadership team is taking over at Arcimoto, a Eugene, Oregon–based startup that makes doorless, three-wheeled electric vehicles. On Thursday, the company said that board member Chris Dawson will step in as CEO, replacing interim CEO Jesse Fittipaldi. Arcimoto added that Fittipaldi will stick around as president and report to Dawson going forward. Two

The Arctic is melting, while hurricanes, blizzards and heat waves leave millions of people and animals in disarray. Lisa Lambert, the head of National Grid’s CVC National Grid Partners, told TechCrunch+ that environmental and social concerns should be top of mind right now for any smart investor. “Not because it’s the right thing to do,

Congruent Ventures new fund bucks the trend of venture pullback, suggesting continued confidence in climate tech Tim De Chant 8 hours Climate tech may have started the year with a down quarter, but don’t count it out just yet. Amid a backdrop of depressing figures from much of the venture capital sector, climate tech deals

What do you do when the lights go out? When the snow became too much for the power lines as a kid, I remember candles and Primus stoves. In today’s world of high-tech electrification, we’re going in a slightly different direction and Dabbsson today announced its new Portable Home Backup Power Ecosystem, which harnesses the

Taiwanese two-wheeler battery swapping company Gogoro has a plan to give energy back to Taiwan’s electrical grid and make money while doing it. The company is partnering with Enel X, an energy services provider, to integrate 2,500 of its GoStations in Taiwan into Enel X’s Virtual Power Plant (VPP). A VPP is a collection of

The United States Treasury updated its list of electric vehicles eligible for a $7,500 EV tax credit per its new rules for battery sourcing, and BMW, Nissan, Rivian, Hyundai, Volvo and Volkswagen are no longer on it. The new requirements will go into effect Tuesday, and they’ll also cut credits for the Tesla Model 3